Have you seen what gold has been doing? Are the forecasts finally upon us? In 2012, the documentary End of the Road: How Money Became Worthless made a claim that was widely dismissed as alarmist at the time. The film argued that once money was severed from constraint, political incentives would overwhelm discipline, debt would expand without correction, and the monetary system would drift toward failure. Critics focused on what did not happen quickly, hyperinflation, dollar collapse, systemic banking failure, and concluded the warning was exaggerated.

Instant gratification is not your friend. We must think in systems. Granted, it has been more than a decade since that documentary, but that does not mean they were wrong. I believe their conclusion deserves revision. The documentary was not wrong in direction. If anything, it was early in terms of timing and incomplete in terms of how the collapse actually manifested. What it anticipated as an event has instead unfolded as a process. The road did not end abruptly. It lengthened, warped, and lost its guardrails. Gold trading above $4,300 per ounce is not the story. It is the instrument telling the story.

What the Documentary Actually Claimed

One of the documentary’s most persistent misunderstandings is that it predicted an imminent, visible collapse. In reality, its central claim was more structural. Once money is detached from a limiting mechanism, whether gold or another hard constraint, political systems face no natural brake on spending, borrowing, or the creation of currency. Correction is replaced by discretion.

But that’s the thing, the warning was not that everything would fail immediately. It was that nothing would be allowed to be corrected cleanly again. That distinction matters because it explains why the system appears stable while simultaneously becoming more distorted with each crisis.

I probably don’t have to tell you this, but since 1971, monetary discipline has not been restored. It has been deferred. And frankly, it’s getting worse. Look at [this chart] and see what stability to instability looks like. Use 1971 as the divider. See how monetary stability looked before, and what happened after, and then ask yourself, “What comes next?”

Gold as a Thermometer, Not a Speculation

Gold is often mischaracterized as a volatile or speculative asset. Of course, it would be, because that framing misses its function. Gold does not generate earnings, innovate, or scale productivity. It does not need to. Its value lies in its stability across time. That makes it an unusually honest measuring device.

When gold rose from roughly $35 per ounce in 1971 to over $4,300 today, the implication is not that gold became extraordinary. It is that the unit measuring it did not hold its value. Measured against gold, the dollar has lost over 99 percent of its original purchasing power since the end of the Bretton Woods system. It’s getting worse. This is not ideology. It is arithmetic. Gold’s role in this context is not predictive. It is diagnostic. It measures currency decay without commentary.

That is why the chart I shared is so crucial to understanding this issue. What I find particularly interesting is that when this documentary was released (2012), gold was trading at around $1,500, and the makers were alarmed by its rapid rise from its status of less than $300in 2000. However, to put this article into perspective, I want you to understand that gold was trading at about $2,289 at the beginning of $2025, and it is trading at about $4,328 at the time of this entry (12 months later). That’s a rapid shift, which means our dollar is rapidly dying.

What the Documentary Got Right

The film correctly anticipated several structural outcomes that are now difficult to dispute. First, monetary expansion became permanent. Quantitative easing was initially introduced as an emergency measure and later normalized as a standard policy. Central bank balance sheets expanded dramatically and never returned to pre-crisis norms. Crisis response became the operating model.

Second, inflation did not disappear. It was redistributed, covered up, and ignored. Rather than expressing itself immediately as consumer price hyperinflation, it flowed into assets. Housing, equities, education, healthcare, and energy absorbed currency expansion for years, masking monetary degradation while amplifying inequality.

Third, sovereign debt ceased to function as a repayable obligation. Modern debt is rolled, refinanced, and supported through rate suppression or indirect monetization. The idea of normalization persists rhetorically, but not operationally.

Finally, gold quietly returned to relevance, not among retail investors, but among central banks. The most informed actors in the system increased their gold holdings while publicly reaffirming confidence in fiat currencies. That divergence is not accidental. In fact, let’s just call it what it is: messed up!

What Was Early, Not Wrong

The documentary’s most criticized prediction was hyperinflation. That did not occur in the classic historical sense. However, the underlying mechanism it identified did manifest, just through different channels.

Inflation was managed rather than explosive. Globalization, asset absorption, financial repression, and reserve currency demand delayed the collapse of consumer prices. Inflation became structural rather than catastrophic. It became embedded in the cost of living rather than being announced as a monetary failure.

The same applies to dollar collapse. The dollar did not fail as a reserve currency. It degraded while remaining dominant. Reserve status delayed consequences. It did not eliminate them.

Structural inevitability does not imply temporal immediacy. I would also argue that this ride is not over. In many ways, I think the ride has finally begun. Hyperinflation and a dollar collapse are still on the table. Everything leading up to this might have well been the windup.

BRICS, De-Dollarization, and the Limits of the Alternative

The rise of BRICS is often presented as evidence that a coherent alternative to the dollar system is forming. While that interpretation overstates the case, the phenomenon itself is revealing. One has to ask why other nations would seek to abandon the dollar if it were truly strong. If the dollar were stable, trusted, and durable, there would be little incentive to build alternatives. The impulse to leave is itself the signal.

The interesting part is that the BRICS is not (currently) a unified monetary bloc. Its members have divergent interests, uneven development, internal political risk, and no shared fiscal authority. Trust, the core requirement of any reserve system, is not automatically transferable simply because dissatisfaction exists with the current one. Discontent does not equal coherence. Therein lies the clue. It is happening despite the necessary foundation.

Gold accumulation by BRICS nations is a real phenomenon, often misinterpreted as a sign of confidence in a replacement system. Contrastive Inquiry suggests a different interpretation. It reflects distrust of all fiat systems, including their own. That conclusion follows naturally, since their currencies are still measured against the dollar, and the dollar itself is losing purchasing power. The most aggressive critics of the dollar do not hedge in one another’s currencies. They hedge in gold.

In that sense, BRICS is not evidence of a ready successor system. It is evidence of preparation for instability. The effort to accumulate gold in support of alternative settlement structures is a symptom, and possibly a warning. When confidence erodes, actors do not wait for collapse. They reposition. The question is not whether the ship is sinking. It is why so many are already moving toward the lifeboats. In a Ponzi scheme, someone is always left holding the bag. It is usually the one who refuses to see the signs.

War as a Monetary Accelerant

War has always been an accelerant of monetary distortion. It justifies debt expansion, currency creation, capital controls, and the suppression of dissent. Reform is delayed by reframing economic strain as a patriotic necessity rather than a structural failure. In my projection models, large-scale wars are consistently accompanied by significant economic shifts, not because war fixes systems, but because it forces them to change.

War does not typically cause financial failure, but financial failure can clearly contribute to war. Conflict exposes and amplifies existing weaknesses rather than creating new ones. While war can temporarily support a reserve currency through increased demand and capital flight, it also raises the cost of future correction. Stabilization achieved through coercion is not stability. It is a postponement.

The same logic applies to perpetual stimulus. What is framed as economic support often functions as a delayed reckoning. I refer to this dynamic as the Keynesian Economic Nightmare. Regardless of the mechanism used, war or stimulus, expansion or suppression, the trajectory converges. We know this because the pattern has repeated throughout history, across systems, ideologies, and geographies.

If the System Breaks, What Replaces It

So, what happens if the system collapses in on itself? That is an important question, and one that should be asked. Technology changes things. Central bank digital currencies are a plausible next layer, not as a trust solution, but as a control solution. They solve settlement and compliance problems, not confidence problems. Their adoption would likely coincide with restrictions on capital movement rather than the restoration of discipline.

What we need is something we are unlikely to receive. In other words, a full return to gold backing is unlikely. In fact, history suggests that gold might be confiscated once again (at some point). Another possibility might be a partial constraint, where gold functions as a settlement reference or collateral anchor rather than a circulating medium.

Considering the BRICS initiative, a multipolar currency world may also be possible. In theory, it would be less efficient, more fragmented, and more volatile. Technologies that expedite exchange and crossover might resolve some of those issues. Artificial Intelligence could help mitigate the trust issues that are likely to result from the implosion. For clarity, reduced trust produces friction.

Of course, the successor to a failing monetary system is rarely stable. It is usually more controlled. Some might argue that a gold-backed global currency solves that problem, but who wants to sign up for that program? Not me! Who would trust those in control? Not me!

Why Collapse Has Not Happened

Perhaps the larger question is why the collapse has not yet occurred. That is the multi-trillion-dollar question. The system persists because, for some reason, it continues to function, albeit imperfectly. One could point to any number of potentials here. Reserve-currency inertia, asset absorption, financial repression, geopolitical leverage, and the absence of a viable replacement have all contributed to suspending collapse rather than resolving the underlying problem.

Or maybe it is something much simpler. Perhaps it boils down to limited understanding. This may be one of the rare moments in history where widespread financial illiteracy has slowed systemic failure. Monetary systems that depend on participation, confidence, and deferred consequences tend to persist longer when most participants do not fully understand their mechanics.

Financial literacy is largely absent from modern public education. I highly doubt that it’s an accident. If understanding were widespread, trust would erode more quickly, participation would decline, and structural stress would emerge more rapidly. Ignorance does, in fact, contribute to system stability. That is not controversial in systems theory; it is almost axiomatic. So, yeah, in that narrow sense, ignorance has definitely slowed the reckoning.

But what I need you to understand is that suspension is not resolution. Enough participants clearly understand what is happening to signal strain. A gold price near $4,300 does not indicate panic, but it does indicate a loss of confidence in the correction. The system can no longer heal without distortion. Each intervention resolves an immediate issue by deepening a more serious structural one. The Keynesian Economic Nightmare, indeed.

In that sense, the system increasingly resembles the ultimate Ponzi structure, sustained not by productivity or correction, but by continued participation and delayed recognition. The question is no longer whether the road ends. Clearly, it does, and it will. The question is, since the brakes have been removed, how long can a system continue? Wait! Can anyone see out of the window? And more importantly, who the heck is driving? Why are we all in this car in the first place? Who keeps hitting the gas?

Anyway, if you haven’t watched the documentary End of the Road: How Money Became Worthless, you probably should. It remains a fine documentary, loaded with valuable information. It is also available for free on YouTube and lasts only an hour. As far as investments go, it is not a bad one.

Learn More: The Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity

Disclaimer: I shouldn’t have to say this, but the information presented in this article is for educational and informational purposes only. It reflects analysis, interpretation, and opinion, not financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. You need to do what is right for you. I am not a financial adviser, broker, or fiduciary, and nothing in this article should be construed as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset or to engage in any specific financial strategy. Readers are encouraged not to be idiots and to conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals before making financial decisions. Any actions taken based on the information presented here are done at the reader’s own risk.